The Ties That Bind
by Insert Witty Name Here
Summary: House and Chase both come to terms with what it means to be a father. NON-slash. Father/son fic it's like severitus for House, lol


Summary: House and Chase both come to terms with what it means to be a father. NON-slash. Father/son fic (it's like severitus for House, lol)

A/N: I got this idea in my head and just couldn't stop thinking about it. Usually, I play these little plot ideas out in my head because I'm too lazy to write, but I have a big paper due and this is a good way to procrastinate. Please let me know what you think.

This chapter is quite short simply because its just introductory, **I promise future chapters will be much longer**!

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_Tears stream down your face..._

Robert Chase stood outside the isolation room on the fifth floor of Prince Plainsboro Teach Hospital sometime around 10 p.m., watching the chest of his patient rise and fall in an unnatural way. The tubes were forcing air into lungs that had given up hours ago. He was at a loss of what to do. He hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, past the point of fatigue and just approaching exhaustion.

A crippling sadness swept over him when he realized that Gregory House would be dead by morning. He rested his forehead against the glass and watched his father slowly die.

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**Two years and 10 Months Earlier**

It took months before Chase worked up the energy to go through the things left behind by his parents. While his father had cut him out of the will, family members still left it up to him to decide what to do with all the random boxes of photo albums, and old quilts sewn by grandmothers and aunts he had never met. Two months after his father died, his cousins had packed and shipped all the odds and ends that were left. He had tried so hard to leave all these things behind. In the end, the past always catches up with you, no matter how fast you run.

He took his time getting dressed. It was Saturday and probably the first one in months that he wasn't on call. He walked around his apartment, tidying up the things in an attempt to stall. By 10 a.m. He'd run out of things to do and finally grabbed his car keys and the key to the storage unit that had been waiting for him for months now.

He started unpacking the boxes in the front of the small 8 by 10 unit and worked his way to the back. The first box was full of dusty picture frames. A few were of him when he was little, some were of his parents, long before his father left. The next box looked liked someone had emptied out the entire contents of a filing cabinet into it. Old tax records, copies of tax records and deeds to properties that had been sold off after his father's death.

Chase never did ask who his father had left his money to. Didn't much care by that point. The man didn't even had the nerve to tell Chase he was dying. A part of him tried to convince itself that his father had given the money to charity in a last act of kindness. Chase let out a grunt of annoyance while his stuffed the papers in a garbage bag. That was probably the last intention his father had, the man he had grown to love and learned to hate.

He finally found the bottom of the box, flattened, threw it to the side and opened the next one, using his keys to tear the thick seam of tape holding it together. Chase had moved around a lot since leaving home. There was something peaceful and methodical in packing and unpacking. It was predictable and safe.

"Forgiveness, son. Can you find it in yourself to forgive those that have wronged you?"

That was what Father Michael had asked him the night before he packed his things and left seminary school. He knew what he was supposed to say. That in the matter of eternity, the things his father did and didn't do weren't supposed to matter. Chase didn't want to lie. Couldn't really. He was still too angry at the time to speak about his father with anything less than venom in his voice. It didn't take long for his mentor's attention to grab hold of it. He sympathized with the poor guy, but you just can't push a person to do something they aren't ready for.

He took a deep breath and pushed aside the memories. The third box was all photo albums. And the next box and the one after that. Chase sighed in defeat. This was all he could handle for today. He would take the albums home with him and sort through what was worth keeping. He half-dragged, half-carried the cumbersome boxes to the trunk of his car. Luckily he was at the end of the long row of hideous orange units and was able to drag the ton of paper to the dumpster.

He carried three boxes of albums one by one up to his apartment before taking a shower to wash the dust and sweat off. He ignored the sting he felt in his eyes when he thought about having to look at pictures of his mother. He wasn't one of those who looked back on bittersweet memories of when his mother was healthy, like the rest of her friends and family did.

When he got himself dressed, he ignored the boxes waiting for him in the living room and instead slipped on a pair of flip flops and grabbed his wallet before heading to the grocery store.

It was well after dark when he finally flipped off the television show he had been unsuccessfully trying to watch. He turned on the stereo and found some music that was distracting enough to keep him from going off the deep end before the night was over.

The first album was a baby book that his parents had put together when he was born. There were little descriptions in his mother's handwriting about his height and weight at his birth with a picture of him just a few weeks old. His skin was still pink and he had a perpetual frown, as if he already knew what he was getting himself into.

There wasn't anything past his second birthday, leaving two-thirds of the book empty. He chucked it to right to start a keep pile and moved on to the next one. His parents wedding photos, one after the other filled the album from front to back. He hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to keep it. If he ever had kids one day, they might be curious about what their grandparents looked like. The next one was child hood photos of his mother and father. They didn't have very many, which was why he assumed that they had put them all together in one album. He set it in the middle, waiting until later if he would decide to keep it.

There was only one more album left in the box. It was the thickest so far and from the looks of it, it had been thumbed through more than a few times. There was a yellow tinge to it and he knew this one had probably been sitting on a bookshelf by the window, while the others had barely seen the light of day. He flipped open to see a picture of his mother, the only picture he had seen where she looked truly happy. There was a date haphazardly scrawled underneath it that would have put her around 23 at the time. He took a closer look and realized that she was in New York, sitting in front of a museum he vaguely recognized. He flipped through, savoring every picture. One of her with a few other girls at a bar, all smiling, care free, and clearly hammered. He would have found them endearing if he hadn't seen those same drinks in her hand the last five years of her life. He turned the pages slowly, making sure not to miss any picture. A few didn't contain his mother at all, but what he supposed were old college friends of hers. It was the time of her life by the looks of it. He flipped over the last, thick laminated page to find one single photo of his mother and some random guy. His eyes dropped to his mother's handwriting below it.

Me and Greg, xmas '79

He glanced back up and his heart stopped. One much younger Gregory House stood next to his mother in what looked liked her dorm room from the other pictures he had seen.

"Shit." He muttered out loud. It didn't take a medical degree to figure out the math on that date.

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It took all he had to walk away from the isolation ward. He made his way to the only place he knew for sure would be empty. He passed through the diagnostics office. Folders and books lay open, along with both of their patients medical histories. There wasn't anything linking House and the patient they had accepted two days before, so they had ruled whatever it was that they had as infectious, despite the fact that no one else had come down with it.

He paid no mind to it though. He had every bit of information they had on it memorized. The others had gone down to the cafeteria or to the locker rooms to change and catch a few minutes of sleep. He closed the office door behind him and made sure the blinds were shut before curling up on the worn leather couch in House's office.

He fell asleep quickly, repeating the same thing over and over in his mind, '_god please don't let him die, please don't let him, god, please...'_

…_And I will try to fix you._

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_Review Please! :D_


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